Somewhere, Ross Perot is busily ignoring this story:

The 2006 Hyundai Sonata has left the building.

And just like that, Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Alabama has moved from prototypes and testing to the commercial carmaking business, marking a historic red-letter day for Montgomery.

If you want to make thousands of metal stampings in a process that only requires pulling a lever, using a machine that requires no maintenance or calibration, by all means put the plant in Tijuana or Lahore or Shanghai or wherever. If you want to make cars, ones that don't fall apart as they drive off the dealer lot at any rate, well, maybe you aught to consider the good ol' US. Efficiency and effectiveness always come at a price, but there are different sorts of economy, and building something cheaply does not always mean it's built well.

Sorta reminds me of an old TV commercial that was popular when I was a kid... "expensive, but darn well worth it."